Nobody wants to have kids nowadays.

ThorLives · 2015-05-13T14:40:08+00:00

It's not a problem. We, as a species, are overpopulated. We don't have any natural predators that can wipe a good chunk of us out to fix this. The only things we can count on are diseases or natural disasters, but it still wouldn't be enough to bring our population down to an appropriate amount. As it stands, there is no incentive for me to have children other than the fact that I have a uterus and that's still not a compelling enough reason. Besides, the religious and the poor tend to reproduce the most, so they will continue to propegate the species.

VermiciousKnidzz · 2015-05-13T15:20:20+00:00

hmmm...i thought we were still having an over-population problem?

[deleted] · 2015-05-13T09:09:55+00:00

I mean, I know this is anecdotal, but I know a ton of friends who are having babies now. My partner and I are also planning to have children in the not-so-distant future.

And aren't we having an overpopulation problem anyway?

Edit: Birthrate is still more than doubling death rate.

ianturpiesmoustache · 2015-05-13T09:44:27+00:00

Nope, not worried. There's already more than enough people on the planet, in terms of resources and available living space. There's still plenty of people having kids, but if the population drops slightly, that's not a bad thing at all.

LeGrandDiableBlanc · 2015-05-13T14:07:16+00:00

I posted this as a comment to one of your other posts, but it's more applicable to this question.

I think what you will see is the uneducated masses popping out a bunch of kids the old fashioned way (i.e. without any fertility treatments or screening for diseases and defects). They won't be able to afford birth control as easily, and for a variety of sociological factors, they won't use it as much even if it is free (which is true today). I believe that growing up feeling like you never had a chance at success kind of removes the stigma of child rearing causing your quality of life to diminish; their lives are already difficult, how much worse can it get? The sheer number of children will keep these families in poverty, and in turn those children will grow up impoverished, much less likely to be educated, and likely fall into the same vicious cycle as their parents.

Because of advancements in fertility and birth control, wealthy parents will exercise complete control over how many children they have, limiting themselves to one or two at the most opportune time in their lives. They will also spend tremendous amounts of resources on educating and nurturing them, starting from before they're even born. To maintain this sort of lifestyle, the wealthy will create de facto segregated communities for themselves, like they do today!

Within a population, decreasing the birthrate has negative effects on those most dependent on government services; the elderly, disabled, and impoverished. The effect is much less significant for the wealthy, as they can afford to buy their own private versions of whatever government services end. So this will be a catalyst in increasing the gaps (education gap, nutrition gap, childhood stability gap, healthcare gap, and so on...) between the super wealthy and poor. I had mentioned the movie Gattaca. was a TL;DR.

Is there a solution to this problem? I would say that there are many possible solutions to the problem depending upon how loosely you use the term 'solution'.

One option is a mass cultural shift which emphasizes childbirth. The Roman emperor Augustus successfully accomplished this through Leges Juliae. Having children was incentivized, and not having children was disincentivized. For what it’s worth Augustus is considered to be the father of the Roman Empire as we know it today, so we know that it worked for a while at least.

Another option is simply letting high birthrate populations and immigrants make up the difference in population. Eventually they will out breed the native population. To some degree, this is happening with Hispanic populations in the United States (although this is changing recently), and with Muslim populations in Europe. You could argue that Europeans did this to the Native American tribes, though there was a lot of violence and genocide to speed the process along.

You can completely regulate all childbirth, forcing everyone to have no more or less than two children, perhaps granting or even forcing additional children on families to make up for the infertile and those who died before procreating. This is basically some scifi shit that has never been accomplished, but it's hypothetically possible. China attempted the closest thing I can think of to this with the One Child policy, which has had a whole host of unexpected and often undesirable effects.

Finally, you can start killing people off at a certain age. I don't know of any human society that has done this, but there was an episode of Star Trek about it.

cherryblue12 · 2015-05-13T13:08:10+00:00

do you think societies should be worried about the low fertility rates ?

Quite the opposite. The world's population is growing exponentially, and it's a big, big problem. At some point in the not too distant future we're going to run out of food, and shit's going to really hit the fan.

People need to stop having so many babies!

gopher_glitz · 2015-05-13T20:01:42+00:00

I don't see how this is an issue. We obviously don't have a lack of workers since there are so many people without work already.

[deleted] · 2015-05-13T21:27:23+00:00

Nope, we actually have overpopulation so less people is good.

myfatbrokethewall · 2015-05-13T09:37:13+00:00

The solution to low fertility might be automation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Pq-S557XQU

Life extension technologies might be developed as well.

If we should worry about anything, it should be what would happen to ordinary people in such a future. If life extension technologies are developed, will ordinary people have a shot at them? As machines become more "intelligent", what will happen to people who will neither be able to do any job that a machine can't do, nor be able to do any job cheaper than a machine can do it?

[deleted] · 2015-05-13T11:28:24+00:00

Kids have become so expensive that they are almost a section of the economy themselves. With people living longer then ever most couples find that one kid is more then enough

indlife · 2015-05-13T19:56:40+00:00

Low fertility rates usually only really cause two issues:

The first issue would be having enough people to defend the nation if needed. That would be an issue for nations in the past, not so much today with technology. However, while a nation may have enough people to man a few ships, plans, and watch over the computers controlling missiles and drones, they might not have enough to ever launch an invasion and subsequent occupation.

The second is more economical. If the nation has a history of spending lots of its money on taking care of the elderly, then the nation needs production, high sales of produced goods to foreign countries, and very low unemployment. If a country has high production, but is selling everything within the country, then the workers will have to spend their income on buying that stuff. This means that the workers can only take so much taxation before they finally just give up and quit working. The US is a country that spends a ton of its tax income on social welfare for the elderly (Social security and Medicare, and to a lesser extent VA healthcare), thus if we don't have a lot of workers, we won't have the tax income needed to pay for this care. Additionally, if there are a lot of workers and they are taxed heavily, they will spend less in the economy for non-essential goods and services, which could cause a ripple effect and then businesses close, jobs are lost, etc..

haircombsnightmare · 2015-05-13T16:48:19+00:00

Nobody wants to have kids, but

In 2010, 3,999,386 infants were born in the United States.

Thank God they don't want to.

Kittenkajira · 2015-05-13T16:51:51+00:00

It does scare me that so many are making the decision to not have kids. Mainly because those intelligent enough to think about and follow through with a decision like that are perhaps the very people who we want to procreate. If only those who are irresponsible or ignorant raise children, then what will our society look like in the future?

I think there's a lot of misinformation about raising children. People love to bitch. They're bitching all over the place about the woes of raising children. If you sign your children up for 6 extracurricular activities and helicopter parent, then of course you're going to be freakin' tired and never have time. And I honestly don't think kids have to be as expensive as we make it.

There is also great fear of birthing in the US. It is no longer seen as a natural, beautiful thing that every woman is capable of doing. It's seen as this dirty, extended, and terrifying event, and we go to surgeons who fill your head with what-if's and could-happen's.

I'm at a loss for solutions, though. I can't really see any of the above changing.

nope_nic_tesla · 2015-05-13T16:55:17+00:00

I don't see this as a problem. The only problem is if we as a society are unable to adapt.

kick6 · 2015-05-13T18:46:43+00:00

Societies are already worried about the low rates. At present they're filling in the consumerism gap by importing third-worlders, but this is a plan that won't last as the imports don't play by the rules (both economically and legally).

wazzup987 · 2015-05-13T19:46:46+00:00

No it will be rough for a while but this planet needs to get its population under control. in fact i would go a step father and say 2 kids is the base tax rate, a couple with one kid would pay less than one with 2 kids, no kids would pay less than one with no kid, and people who get sterilized pay less than people with no kids. it the only ethical way to shrink the population. Also i did a poll a while back in /r/childfree and there are more women that don't want kids than men http://strawpoll.me/4266001/r

[deleted] · 2015-05-14T19:12:14+00:00

The only big problem that I can see is we will need to figure out how we are going to continue funding our entitlement system (SS, medicare, etc.) if the future generation is going to be sufficiently smaller than the current one.

Millennials are the largest generation in US history. If the subsequent generations are significantly smaller we are in for a rude awakening.

CuriosityCondition · 2015-05-13T11:00:17+00:00

Is there a solution to the problem ?

Is it a problem?

[deleted] · 2015-05-13T09:52:42+00:00

do you think societies should be worried about the low fertility rates ?

Yes, but this is /r/purplepilldebate, not /r/countrybudgets

[deleted] · 2015-05-13T11:48:48+00:00

[permanently deleted]

asdf_clash · 2015-05-13T14:25:23+00:00

If your population sinks under replacement levels then you'll have to get immigrants from other places to make up for it. And immigrants can cause a whole lot of problems

Its no secret that homogeneous populations are the most successful in the long-term, but people like to pretend they aren't for feelings sake

Kenee24 · 2015-05-13T09:47:56+00:00

Yeh meanwhile muslims are reproducing like rabbits, it's disturbing. We have to look at why women are not having children and change that. Feminism needs to stop demonizing stay at home mothers for a start.

Danieltck · 2015-05-13T09:31:17+00:00

Kill over 80% of the world population.

They will want kids then.

[deleted] · 2015-05-13T14:54:01+00:00

Is there a solution to the problem ?

Raising babies sucks. No sane person wants to do that. Solution: Multiple wives for the sexiest men, lower status wives can raise the babies. Eliminate low-quality males addicted to bideogames and anime. Import additional women (not men!) from the Third World.

Or some other, more communal arrangement than having one person stuck alone in a house with children. Almost like.. a tribe, of some sort. Some sort of community. Like hippies, or humans.

SirNemesis · 2015-05-13T15:32:59+00:00

Plenty of men still want to have kids. It's just women that don't want kids.

[deleted] · 2015-05-13T22:26:52+00:00

Its not that men do not want to have kids, its that men do not want to have kids with low quality women. And there are a lot of low quality women.

Title	Nobody wants to have kids nowadays.
Author	HappilySingleWoman
Upvotes	11
Comments	114
Date	May 13, 2015 9:08 AM UTC (11 years ago)
Subreddit	Posted in /r/PurplePillDebate
Original Link	https://old.reddit.com/r/PurplePillDebate/comments/35t925/nobody_wants_to_have_kids_nowadays/
Archive Link	https://theredarchive.com/r/PurplePillDebate/nobody-wants-to-have-kids-nowadays.282187 https://theredarchive.com/post/282187

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